LOCAL Houston | The City Guide October 2016 | Page 44

THE TINY HOUSE MOVEMENT–TEXAS-SIZED
BUILDERS THINK BIG BY BUILDING SMALL
By Tim Moloney | Photography by Joseph West

I am always amused – and amazed – when reading a
story in The New York Times, for example, about living in
a tiny 200sf apartment in New York City. However the
photographer shoots it, the place always looks spacious
and stylish, but as you read on, you learn that the bed
folds down into a desk/dining table, or the bathroom
somehow converts to a galley kitchen. Who wants to live
like that?
While that may be an extreme example, a lot of people
are taking part in the “tiny house” movement. Led mainly
by millennials, who are eschewing the material trappings
of their forebears, the movement has finally reached
Houston, home of the Tuscan McMansion. But, at
1,200sf, these tiny houses are actually Texas-sized.
Welcome to Live Oak Landing in the Energy Corridor,
ground zero for suburban sprawl, and now the home of
these innovative small houses on reduced-size lots.
Builders THOMAS DORSEY and MARK COERVER, native
Houstonians, UT graduates and business partners, are
betting big that Houston is ready to live smaller.

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L O C A L

| october 16

Mark Coerver